Six #3
Again someone sees something in me they should not.
I have spent years making myself smaller. Quieter. Forgettable. Yet ever since entering the Embrace, strangers keep looking directly at the parts of me I have spent my entire life trying to bury.
It feels dangerous. Like I am a drop of blood in water.
“Something in you moves like tide beneath stone,” he whispers. “The sea remembers what the sky forgets.”
Then, just as suddenly, clarity returns to his face and his eyes fade back to pale blue-green, focusing slowly on me as though surfacing from deep underwater. A faint smile curves across his mouth.
“Hello, Luceris.”
I blink at him, still trying to understand what just happened.
“I saw you step in front of Lyssandra earlier,” he says warmly. “I thought it was very brave. Perhaps slightly reckless. But brave nonetheless.”
For a moment I can only stare at him, trying to decide whether he remembers any of the things he just said.
“You…” I hesitate. “Are you alright?”
“Oh, certainly.” His smile widens faintly, though there is something distant about it. “I drift sometimes.”
That explains absolutely nothing.
“And who are you?”
“Theon Ryll.” He inclines his head slightly. “The waters whispered of our meeting long before it happened.”
I try very hard not to react to that.
“Did they?”
“Oh yes.” His expression softens dreamily. “I have seen you before, I think. In dreams. A boy with honey skin and golden eyes, filled to the brim with light.”
Heat creeps unexpectedly into my face. I tell myself he means nothing by it. Theon speaks like someone only half tethered to the present moment, his attention drifting in and out like clouds too thin to hold the rain. Even standing still, he seems strangely disconnected from the room around him.
“I had something important to tell you,” he says suddenly, brow furrowing faintly. “Though I appear to have lost it.” He laughs softly to himself. “That happens rather often.”
“You forget things?”
“I forget many things.” His smile turns distant again. “The water carries too much at once. Memories. Dreams. Echoes. Sometimes it becomes difficult to tell which belong to me.”
A small knot tightens unexpectedly inside my chest.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Oh, I am quite content.” His voice grows airy again. “There is beauty in surrendering to the tides, even when they carry you too far from shore.”
I have absolutely no idea what that means.
“That sounds… complicated,” I settle on finally.
Theon laughs softly.
“Yes. I suppose it is.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. Then his attention settles fully on me once more, startlingly lucid this time.
“We will speak again,” he says quietly. “Your name is often sung beneath the waves.”
Another strange chill passes through me.
Before I can think of a response, he drifts past me down the corridor with that same fluid grace all the Waterborn seem to possess, as though gravity holds them less firmly than the rest of us.
I watch him disappear for a moment before slipping inside my room.
The first thing I see is the cracked scar in the floor partially hidden beneath the blanket I shoved over it earlier.
Evidence. Even here, alone, my secrets refuse to stay buried.
I shut the door quickly and look away.
The room suddenly feels very small. Too much has happened in a single day. Too many eyes lingering too long on me. Too many people noticing things they shouldn’t notice.
Kael’s voice still coils through my thoughts.
Mine. The memory sends heat and revulsion twisting together low in my stomach. I hate how easily he unsettles me. More than that, I hate that part of me keeps searching for reasons to think about him anyway.
The look on his face after the shadows disappeared refuses to leave me alone—not the violence, or the blood, but the fear.
That was what followed me out of the Dome.
I sit heavily on the edge of the bed and finally pull my boots off, exhaustion settling deep into my bones.
Marissa’s face surfaces next in my mind—young and afraid, yet trusting me anyway.
Guilt presses hard against my ribs. She should survive this place. She’s just a child. But beneath that thought, ugly and persistent, something else still claws desperately for life inside of me.
Self-preservation.
I close my eyes.
Only one Offering leaves the Blood Rites alive.
The reality of that truth weighs more heavily now than it did this morning. I don’t know how to protect Marissa while also protecting myself. I don’t even know if I deserve to survive.
And somewhere beneath all of it, buried deeper than I want to examine too closely, is Kael.
The blood on his mouth. The black in his eyes. The way he stared at his shaking hands afterwards.
I press the heels of my palms against my eyes until darkness blooms behind them.
This is not the time to unravel over a boy I barely know. Especially not one who scares me.
Eventually, exhaustion drags me onto the mattress fully clothed. I stare at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the persistent hum in the walls, and silently pray to a goddess I don’t even believe in.